There’s A New Rumor About Ken Jennings And Jeopardy, And Excuse Me, But It Doesn’t Make Any Sense
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The Internet loves to talk about Jeopardy!, whether that be through viral moments where a contestant gets screwed or commentary on alleged hosting drama in the time since Alex Trebek stepped down during his cancer battle. People also love to discuss Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik’s former shared stint together, and given his tenure as solo host is new-ish at best, it was no real surprise to me that tongues would be wagging after news broke about a new version of Pop Culture Jeopardy.
But, here’s the sneaky thing. I don’t think a lot of the people covering the Jeopardy! beat actually watch Jeopardy, at least not on a regular or semi-regular basis. Why do I think this? Because a wild rumor just ran around about the longtime game show that just doesn't really make sense.
News broke this week that Colin Jost would be hosting the aforementioned brand new celebrity-oriented version of Jeopardy! when it hits the 2024 TV schedule, which will likely be less dangerous than his stint at the 2024 Olympics in Tahiti has been. I like Colin Jost. I think he’ll do a good job with this sort of game show delivery, but shortly after the announcement was made, The Sun reported that Jost could eventually take the mantle from Ken Jennings on the main show as well, with an insider commenting: "Let's see how he does later this year," then saying:
In the meantime, hiring Colin gives Sony a lot of leverage over Ken and, tactically, he would be wise to put on a charm offensive and try to win back the support of the show's fans. If Colin does really well hosting his shows, and the audience drifts further away from Ken, all bets are off.
On the one hand, Jost has been doing SNL since 2005 and has been a "Weekend Update" anchor since 2014. He's been recently branching out into other things, like the NBC Olympics gig he got roasted for by Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson, and now this Pop Culture Jeopardy gig. If the OG series was wide open and needed a host, I could actual see the funnyman being a relatively good fit.
There are two reasons this report feels a bit ridiculous however. The first is that most fans like Ken Jennings.
In fact, Ken Jennings is excellent at hosting Jeopardy. Sure, most people wouldn’t say they have the same fondness for Jennings that they do Trebek. (In fact there was an unpopular opinion on Reddit a few months ago where this debate specifically played out.) But people like Jennings, and no offense to Mayim Bialik, who was totally fine at hosting Jeopardy, but Ken is less awkward, his banter is good with the contestants, and he always feels like he's having a good time onstage.
Actually, the thing I like most about Jennings is that he seems to know the answers a lot of times and is not just be reading from cue cards, which also allows him to inject off-the-cuff commentary, sometimes in an extremely funny way. This happened recently when contestants all missed what would seemingly be a very popular (and kind of gross) Twilight question.
The second thing is, The Sun almost contradicts its own report when the outlet spoke to a Sony source close to the show who also said the following:
Knowing the leadership at Sony Pictures TV, the last reason they would fire Ken Jennings is because of on-air mistakes. It's not a live show; it's taped well in advance, and therefore, mistakes are just as much, if not more, the producer's and writers' responsibility as they are Ken's. Instead, the only real reason to replace Ken is if the ratings took a nosedive, and that hasn't happened yet.
The key here being "and that hasn't happened yet." Again, listen, do I think Ken Jennings needs to host every iteration of Jeopardy! to exist ever? No, I do not. I love when he does TOC events since those are his peeps, and I'm happy he's our regular Jeopardy host. I actually think he'd do a good job with a pop culture version of the show simply because he tends to have the most fun when it comes to pop culture questions, but I do think it'll be a nice change-up for Colin Jost to do the new version.
And then Jost can get up to whatever other weird stuff he's invested in in any given moment -- I dunno, like getting that Staten Island Ferry off the ground or whatever. Let's make this new Jeopardy! iteration a bromance and not a rivalry, please.
